Just a month after her boyfriend slipped it on her finger, Sara Stocco's shining engagement ring went from hand, to mouth, to the bottom of Lake Minnetonka in a matter of moments.
Boating on July 4 with her fiancé, Adam Segar, and drifting about 50 feet offshore with other boater friends, Stocco went into a frenzy as the ring, which she had removed to apply sunscreen, fell into the 4 1/2-feet-deep water and nestled somewhere into the sandy bottom.
Several friends jumped in, frantically diving to the bottom but mostly making the water murkier. Segar stood stunned. Stocco's gut reaction? Look for goggles.
"It was chaotic. I just remember thinking, 'Oh, my gosh, I just lost my ring that I've had a little over a month,'" Stocco said of the .89-carat diamond ring from Tiffany's, worth $7,000.
Word of her plight quickly spread to those on nearby boats, including the son of area scuba diver Denny Geffre. The son called Dad.
"I find cars and snowmobiles or boats that sink, anything that's just lost," said Geffre, 60, who arrived on the scene 30 minutes later, scuba gear and metal detector at the ready. "There aren't that many cars that actually fall through the lake, but there's probably a lot of rings."
Stocco, 27, a St. Paul high school teacher, had slipped hers off and put it in her mouth so she could put sunscreen on her fiancé.
"My friends were all telling me that I shouldn't put lotion on or shower while wearing it, so it wouldn't get dirty, and then it was gone. So ironic," she said.
